The Myths and Fables of To-Day
()
About this ebook
Read more from Samuel Adams Drake
The Making of the Great West: Illustrated History of the American Frontier 1512-1883 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Making of the Great West (Illustrated Edition): History of the American Frontier 1512-1883 Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Battle of Gettysburg 1863 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOld Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOld Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBurgoyne's Invasion of 1777: With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Young Vigilantes: A Story of California Life in the Fifties Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNooks and Corners of the New England Coast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery Tourist's Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Myths and Fables of To-Day
Related ebooks
Myths and Legends from Around the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFairy Tales Every Child Should Know Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFairy Tales Every Child Should Know Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFolk-lore and Legends: German Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrotherhood of the Snake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSupernatural Horror in Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath, and Afterwards Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPussy and Her Language Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of Dreams and Ghosts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death-Blow to Spiritualism Being the True Story of the Fox Sisters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFancies Versus Fads Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Basket Woman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegends That Every Child Should Know Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Domestic folk-lore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWitches and Wizards: Astonishing Real Life Stories Behind the Occult’s Greatest Legends, Myths and Mysteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East-West Sword and Word Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsApparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFairies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA World Treasury of Riddles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Allies' Fairy Book - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Last and First Men Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Night-Side of Nature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrdo Endo: The Order of the End! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCodes Set in Stone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat Which Should Not Be Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wonderful Story of Ravalette Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDEATH, AND AFTERWARDS: Philosophical Essay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reference For You
The Emotion Thesaurus (Second Edition): A Writer's Guide to Character Expression Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Everything Sign Language Book: American Sign Language Made Easy... All new photos! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn Sign Language in a Hurry: Grasp the Basics of American Sign Language Quickly and Easily Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51,001 Facts that Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Legal Words You Should Know: Over 1,000 Essential Terms to Understand Contracts, Wills, and the Legal System Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51001 First Lines Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buddhism 101: From Karma to the Four Noble Truths, Your Guide to Understanding the Principles of Buddhism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bored Games: 100+ In-Person and Online Games to Keep Everyone Entertained Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5THE EMOTIONAL WOUND THESAURUS: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Emily Post's Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythology 101: From Gods and Goddesses to Monsters and Mortals, Your Guide to Ancient Mythology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Astrology 101: From Sun Signs to Moon Signs, Your Guide to Astrology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robert's Rules For Dummies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Show, Don't Tell: How to Write Vivid Descriptions, Handle Backstory, and Describe Your Characters’ Emotions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5U.S. History 101: Historic Events, Key People, Important Locations, and More! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Everything Essential Spanish Book: All You Need to Learn Spanish in No Time Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Myths and Fables of To-Day
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Myths and Fables of To-Day - Samuel Adams Drake
Samuel Adams Drake
The Myths and Fables of To-Day
Published by Good Press, 2022
goodpress@okpublishing.info
EAN 4057664592545
Table of Contents
I A RECKONING WITH TIME
II THE FOLK-LORE OF CHILDHOOD
III WEATHER LORE
IV SIGNS OF ALL SORTS
V CHARMS TO GOOD LUCK
VI CHARMS AGAINST DISEASE
VII OF FATE IN JEWELS
VIII OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE
IX OF EVIL OMENS
X OF HAUNTED HOUSES, PERSONS, AND PLACES
XI OF PRESENTIMENTS
XII THE DIVINING-ROD
XIII WONDERS OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE
XIV SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT
XV FORTUNE-TELLING, ASTROLOGY, AND PALMISTRY
I
A RECKONING WITH TIME
Table of Contents
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
To say that superstition is one of the facts of history is only to state a truism. If that were all, we might treat the subject from a purely philosophical or historical point of view, as one of the inexplicable phenomena of an age much lower in intelligence than our own, and there leave it.
But if, also, we must admit superstition to be a present, a living, fact, influencing, if not controlling, the everyday acts of men, we have to deal with a problem as yet unsolved, if not insolvable.
I know it is commonly said that such things belong to a past age—that they were the legitimate product of ignorance, and have died out with the education of the masses. In other words, we know more than our ancestors did about the phenomena of nature, and therefore by no means accept, as they did—good, superstitious souls!—the appearance of a comet blazing in the heavens, or the heaving of an earthquake under our feet, as events having moral significance. With the aid of electricity or steam we perform miracles every day of our lives, such as, no doubt, would have created equal wonder and fear for the general stability of the world not many generations ago.
Very true. So far as merely physical phenomena are concerned, most of us may have schooled ourselves to disunite them wholly from coming events; but as regards those things which spring from the inward consciousness of the man himself, his intuitions, his perceptions, his aspirations, his imaginative nature, which, if strong enough, is capable of creating and peopling a realm wholly outside of the little world he lives in—ay, there’s the rub.
Who will undertake to span the gulf stretching out a shoreless void between the revelations of science and the incomprehensible mysteries of life itself? It is upon that debatable ground that superstition finds its strongest foothold, and, like the ivy clinging round old walls, defies every attempt to uproot it. As Hamlet so cogently puts it,—
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Superstition, we know, is much older than recorded history, and we now stand on the threshold of the twentieth century; yet just in proportion as humanity has passed over this enormous space of time, hand in hand with progress, superstition has followed it like its shadow. That shadow has not yet passed away.
There is no sort of use in denying the proneness of weak human nature to admit superstition. It is an open door, through which the marvellous finds easy access. Imbibed in the cradle, it is not even buried in the grave. Age cannot stale, nor custom wither
those ancient fables of ghosts, giants, goblins, and brownies told by fond mothers to children to-day, just as they were told by mothers centuries ago. Even the innocent looking Easter egg, which continues to enjoy such unbounded popularity with old and young, comes of an old Aryan myth; while the hanging up of one’s stocking, at Christmas, is neither more nor less than an act of superstition, originating in another myth; or, in plain English, no Santa Claus, no stocking.
How much of childhood’s charm in the greatest of all annual festivals, the world over, would remain if Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, and St. Nicholas were stripped of their traditional, but wholly fictitious, character? One of our popular magazines for children—long life to it!—flourishes under the title of St. Nicholas to-day; and during the very latest observance of the time-honored festival, a leading journal in New England’s chief city devoted considerable space in its editorial columns to an elaborate defence of that dear old myth Santa Claus, with whom, indeed, we should be very loth to part, if only for the sake of old associations.
It is also noticed that quite recently stories of the wonderful brownies have enjoyed their greatest popularity. For a time these spindle-shanked, goggle-eyed puppets could be seen in every household, in picture-books, on book covers, in the newspapers—in short, everywhere. Should the children be told that there never were any such creatures as fairies or brownies, there would be an end to all the charm they possess; for, unquestionably, their only hold upon the popular mind rests upon the association with olden superstition. Otherwise they would be only so many commonplace rag dolls.
Kipling’s popular Jungle Stories,
probably more widely read than any stories of the century, give still further effect to the same idea.
Now, is not the plea that these are mere harmless nothings by far the most short-sighted one that could be advanced? The critical thought to be impressed here is that about the first teaching little children receive is a lesson in superstition, and that, too, at a time when their young minds are most susceptible to lasting impressions. We have yet to hear of the mother, nursery-maid, or governess, who begins the story of Cinderella or Bluebeard with the warning that it is not a real true story,
as children say.
Are children of a larger growth any less receptive to the marvellous? Great oaks from little acorns grow.
The seed first planted in virgin soil later bears an abundant harvest. Stage plays, operas, poetry, romances, painting, and sculpture dealing with the supernatural command quite as great a popularity, to-day, as ever. Fortune telling, palmistry, astrology, clairvoyance, hypnotism, and the rest, continue to thrive either as a means of getting a living, or of innocent diversion, leaving their mark upon the inner consciousness just the same in one case as in the other.
So much being undeniable, it stands with every honest inquirer after truth to look these facts in the face without blinking. Ignorance we dare not plead. The dictates of a sound common sense will not permit us to dismiss what we do not understand with a laugh, a shrug, or a sneer. To scold is not to answer.
Superstition is not easily defined. To say that it is a disposition to believe more than is warranted by reason, leaves us just as helpless as ever; for where reason is impotent we have nothing tangible left to fall back upon. There is absolutely no support on which to rest that lever. Religion and philosophy, which at first fostered superstition, long ago turned against it all the forces they possessed. Not even science may hope to overthrow what can only be reached through the inner consciousness of man, because science can have little to do with the spiritual side of man. That intangible something still eludes its grasp. If all these combined forces of civilization have so far signally failed to eradicate superstition, so much the worse for civilization.
We might also refer to the efforts of some very erudite scholars to interpret modern superstition by the aid of comparative mythology. Vastly interesting, if not wholly convincing, theories have been constructed on this line. Instructive, too, is the fact that some of our most familiar nursery stories may be traced to the ancient folk-lore of still older peoples. Even a remote antiquity is claimed for the familiar nursery tale of Jack and Jill
; while something very similar to the story of Little Red Riding Hood
is found, in its purity, in the grewsome werewolf folk-lore of Germany; and Jonah’s Gourd,
of the East, we are told, probably is the original of Jack and the Beanstalk
of the West.
But the very fact of the survival of all these hoary superstitions, some of them going back so far that all further trace is lost, certainly furnishes food for thought, since they seemingly enjoy as great a popularity as ever.
Superstition being thus shown to be as old as human history, the question naturally arises, not how it may have originated in the Dark Ages, but how it has kept its hold so tenaciously throughout all the succeeding centuries down to our own time.
Most peoples, barbarians even, believed in some sort of a future state, in the principle of good and evil, and of rewards and punishments. There needs no argument then to account for the insatiable longing to pry into futurity, and to discover its hidden mysteries. The same idea unsettled the minds of former generations, nor can it be truthfully said to have disappeared before the vaunted wisdom of this utilitarian age. Like all forbidden fruit, this may be said to be the subject of greatest anxiety to weak human kind.
What then is this talisman with the aid of which we strive to penetrate the secrets of the world beyond us?
Man being what he is, only a little lower than the angels,
endowed with the supernatural power of calling up at will mental images of both the living and the dead, of building air-castles, and peopling them according to his fantasy, as well in Cathay as in Spain, of standing by the side of an absent friend on the summit of Mont Blanc, one moment among the snows, the next flitting through the garden spots of sunny Italy—if he is thus capable of transporting himself into an enchanted land by the mere exercise of the power of his imagination—what could better serve him as a medium of communication with the unknown, and what shall deter him from seeking to fathom its deepest mysteries? Napoleon said truly that the imagination governs the universe. Every one has painted his own picture of heaven and hell as well as Dante or Milton, or the divine mysteries as truly as Leonardo or Murillo. Surely, the imagination could go no further.
Assuming this to be true, there is little need to ask why, in this enlightened age, the attempt should be made to revive vagaries already decrepit, that would much better be allowed to go out with the departed century, unhonored and unsung. Such a question could proceed only from a want of knowledge of the true facts in the case.
But whether superstition is justified by the dictates of a sound common sense, is not so material here, as whether it actually does exist; and if so, to what extent. That is what we shall try to make clear in the succeeding pages. The inquiry grows interesting in many ways, but most of all, we think, as showing the slow stages by which the human mind has enfranchised itself from a species of slavery, without its counterpart in any direction to which we may turn for help or guidance. Even science, that great leveller of popular error, limps here. Certainly, what has existed as long as human history must be accepted as a more or less active force in human affairs. We are not, therefore, dealing with futilities.
Of the present status of superstition, the most that can be truthfully said is that some of its worst forms are nearly or quite extinct, some are apparently on the wane, while those representing, perhaps, the widest extremes (the most puerile and the most vital), such, for example, as relate to vapid tea-table gossip on the one hand, and to fatal presentiments on the other, continue quite as active as ever. Uncivilized beings are now supposed to be the only ones who still hold to the belief in witchcraft, although within a very few months it has been currently reported as a fact that the judge of a certain Colorado court admitted the plea of witchcraft to be set up, because, as this learned judge shrewdly argued, more than half the people there believed in it. The defendant, who stood charged with committing a murderous assault upon a woman, swore that she had bewitched him, and was acquitted by the jury, mainly upon his own testimony.
Unquestionably modern hypnotism comes very close to solving the problem of olden witchcraft, which so baffled the wisdom, as it tormented the souls and bodies, of our ancestors, with this difference: that, while witchcraft was believed to be a power to work evil, coming direct from his Satanic Majesty himself, hypnotism is a power or gift residing in the individual, like that of mesmerism.
But if it be true that there are very few believers in witchcraft among enlightened beings to-day, it cannot be denied that thousands of highly civilized men and women as firmly believe in some indefinable relation between man and the spirit world as in their own existence; while tens of thousands believe in such a relation between mind and mind. Indeed, the former class counts some very notable persons among its converts. For example, Camille Flammarion, the distinguished scientist, positively declares that he has had direct communication with hundreds